Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper I demonstate that a unique cluster of foreign policy information instutions (including legislative oversight, press freedoms, and freedom of information related to foreign policy) increase the effectiveness of military intervention by democracies. Countries that build these institutions tend to win more disputes, secure long-term security and growth, and accomplish these things with less military spending, as compared to democracies or autocracies that lack these mechanisms. As part of the project, a new dataset measuring these republican institutions around the world will be presented. The findings have implications for the democratic peace, diversionary theory, and two-level theories of world politics.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: This paper revisits the role of the “middle class” in order to make sense both of the U.S. fascism of the 1920s and of the present. Comparisons with Germany of the 1920s help to ground the argument that fascism is likely to arise during periods of reorganization of the capitalist system. It is at such points that two critical factors come together: capitalists choose at the same time both to institute policies that dramatically increase exploitation of the working class and to cause a marked loss of security and status for the collaborator “middle class,” whatever it may be at a particular juncture in history. The collaborator class role is vital to the extraction of profit from and control of the working class. Since that class has some power, it is critical that they voluntarily consent to managing the devastation below them that results from the policies they must administer; gaining that consent is difficult when the same time they themselves must cope with demotion. Fascist ideologies are aimed at that class and serve as potent tools for keeping the collaborator class from revolting.

Publication Type: Best Student Paper Proposal
Abstract: While excavating at the pyramid complex of Senwosret III at Dahshur in the late 19th century, J.J. de Morgan discovered some unparalleled finds which included five small boats. Today, only four of the “Dahshur boats” can be located with certainty; two are in the United States and two are on display in The Egyptian Museum, Cairo. This work is an addendum to presentations from previous annual meetings and focuses on a new interpretation of the technology that was employed to secure these vessels for use on the Nile.
Boats require both longitudinal and transverse stability to function properly. While the longitudinal strengthening elements of these boats (mortise-and-tenons) are clearly understood, the nature of their transverse strengthening is more contentious. Currently, numerous small wooden "dovetail" fasteners provide the necessary transverse support, however, these are not functional in ships as they would dislodge with minimal torsion. Accordingly, a theory congruent with earlier Egyptian shipbuilding traditions was developed, which stated the dovetails were modern replacement of ancient lashings ("lashing-theory").
In this presentation I intend to clarify a few inconsistencies in the academic record regarding these boats, but the primary focus will be on a re-interpretation of the archaeological evidence (via the Cairo Dahshur boats) that suggests an alternative to lashing-theory: neither dovetails nor lashings were necessary to secure the vessels.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The paper looks at the phenomenon of global capital market interconnectedness and recent instability -- asking whether we have or should expect some regulatory authority to be capable of addressing the problem of global systemic risk and its impact.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: In March, 1860, one thousand Chinese slaves mutinied on the Norway, an American ship en route from Macao to Havana, which was a copy of a slave ship designed for slaves from Africa. After being locked below decks for five days, the Chinese lit fires in the hold and forced open the hatches. The crew hurried to abandon ship and the captain threatened to cut the masts and leave with the life boats and provisions. Only after the crew killed thirty and wounded ninety others did the Chinese surrender. Describing the mutiny, one recalled, “Bands of us threw ourselves upon them; Release us or we will burn the ship! We have nothing to lose.” Not until 1862, one year into the American Civil War, did Congress pass the Prohibition of Coolie Trade Act, banning ships registered to the US from transporting enslaved Chinese laborers into any foreign port.

This paper will detail a series of slave rebellions upon American ships carrying kidnapped and enslaved Chinese “coolies’ bound for Cuba and Peru. These slave rebellions have been excluded from discussions of mutinies aboard ships that continued to transport enslaved Africans bound for the US, Caribbean and South America long after transporting slaves was abolished. I inscribe these insurrections by Chinese immigrants into a complex transnational figuration that differed depending on the local status of slavery in Cuba, Haiti, and Peru. These arose with the rise of sugar plantations during the era of the abolition of slavery in England and the need for Peruvian fertilizer (harvested by Chinese slaves from guano pits) for plantations in the American South, Cuba and Mexico.

The crossroads between African American and Asian American enslavement I address in this paper has been critically ignored to this date. Yet abolishing the international “coolie” trade arose with the movement in the US to abolish the sale of Africans. Chinese mutinies also occurred at the time of California’s quick entry into the nation as a “free state” and hence the dramatic “pull” of the gold rush by impoverished free Chinese laborers. These mutinies undermine stereotypes of the Chinese immigrant as the docile model migrant. They should be read as part of a highly rebellious Chinese subjectivity and political expressivity that was found in the Pacific North West in terms, for example, of the Chinese armed resistance to the purges in over 250 rural towns, their refusal to obey bans on laundry in wooden buildings and local codes forbidding should poles, the refusal on the part of over 100,000 Chinese in the U.S. to carry photo identity cards (perhaps the largest mass civil disobedience to date), and the courageous flight of hundreds of enslaved young Chinese prostitutes from the cages and “cribs” of San Francisco. This investigation into Chinese slave mutinies is part of an attempt to correct the under-representation of Asian Americans in transcultural and comparative studies of the Americas.